


We gotta stop meeting like this

by vaguely_concerned



Series: Scoundrels and Thieves 'verse [9]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Humor, M/M, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Mutual Pining, young mchanzo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-12 01:34:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7915339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a dramatic chase is resolved by some off the cuff cuddling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We gotta stop meeting like this

**Author's Note:**

> Picks up a few months after Deal out Jacks or Better in the timeline.

Greece was vibrant with sunshine, the heat tempered by the breeze coming in from the ocean. With its narrow streets and flat-roofed buildings this town was positively cosy – Hanzo could easily have made his way around this place without being seen once, even in broad daylight. He liked places where anyone trying to kill him could be speared on a weather vane without anyone noticing.

Jesse was already twenty minutes late.

Hanzo checked the street sign just to be sure, but no, this was the place they had agreed to meet. Hm. At least he was standing in the shadow for now, behind a slender tree at the edge of a square. He leaned back against the wall.

When Jesse did show up it was at a flat-out sprint, careening around a corner with such speed that he almost bounced into the opposite wall. He clutched some kind of package to his chest and looked around with wild eyes until he spotted Hanzo, then glanced nervously over his shoulder as he ran over. ”Oh thank god, there you are.”

“What is it?” Hanzo demanded, trying to follow his gaze.

“No time to explain. We need to get out of sight. Uh, in here,” Jesse hissed, grabbing Hanzo’s hand and pulling him into a nearby back alley. There were furious shouts following him up the street now.

“What have you done,” Hanzo said flatly.

Jesse waved the question away, hurriedly removing his hat and holding it on his back while shuffling to stand behind Hanzo. “Whatever you do, don’t make eye contact with ‘em.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Hanzo asked, glancing over towards the angry yells, tensing himself for a fight. He seemed to do that a lot around Jesse McCree. “Rival gang members?”

“Florists,” Jesse said, then at Hanzo’s glare: “Extremely agitated florists.”

“...what.”

“Ssssshh,” Jesse shushed, peeking over Hanzo’s shoulder. “They’re comin’ over here - quick, look inconspicuous.”

“How -”

Jesse’s eyes widened at whatever he saw behind Hanzo. “Aw shit. It’s her.”

He glanced around desperately and dropped the hat and the package he had been holding behind a dumpster, then stood there like a man awaiting a charging bull from any direction at any time. There were more shouts nearby and he made a face.

“Right, it’s come to this. C’mere,” he said, stepping into the shadows and pulling Hanzo with him with a hand at the small of his back. Hanzo made a hiccup of surprise as Jesse held him close enough that he could feel his chest moving as he breathed.

“ _What_  - ”

“Please just go with me on this one.” Jesse wrapped his arms around him and hid his face in the curve of Hanzo’s neck, leaning back against the wall with a nonchalance that made it look they’d been standing there for a while. Hanzo’s hands hovered in the air for a second before falling to rest on Jesse’s hips.

“I am expecting a very good explanation for this,” he muttered.

“You’ll see,” Jesse said darkly.

A small elderly woman with gardening gloves and a ferocious air barged into the alley. She zeroed in on Hanzo and said something in a language that was presumably Greek, then saw his confused expression and shook her head gruffly.

“You, young man,” she barked in almost perfect English. “Did you see a dirty thief run through here a moment ago?”

“Hm,” Hanzo said, wondering if meeting her basilisk eyes would actually turn him to stone. Jesse’s breath tickled his hair. “No.”

“That little menace stole a three hundred credit bouquet from right under my nose! ‘Now that’s a mighty fine arrangement you’ve got there’, he says. Takes off his hat, all respectful-like. ‘Oh, thank you for saying so,’ says I, and such a charming smile he has, so I smile back.” She waved a pair of gardening scissors as long as her underarm. “And is it for sale? It might be, for the right price - it’s for a wedding, but I could throw together another one in time since I’ve all the materials on hand,  it’s no problem, I’ll make an exception for you since you seem like such a nice boy. Is it for a special someone, then? ‘You could say that’. _You could say that._ The nerve!”

Hanzo realized he was stroking Jesse’s back absently. “I - ”

“‘You’ll want to have it properly wrapped, then,’ I say, and I go to get the nice paper - and when I turn around again, what do I see but the crook running off with the whole thing?”

“That is -”

“So I rounded up some of my boys to go after him. He ran off in this direction - did you see him?”

“I… have not seen anyone like that. My apologies, I was… preoccupied.”

Jesse’s lips were pressed to the side of his neck. He _did_ feel rather preoccupied.

“Oh yes, don’t offer to help an old lady,” she said sourly. “Just keep on canoodling here in the shadows, why don’t you. _Young people._ ”  

She turned on her heel and marched away, ordering the young men who must be her grandsons to follow her like a proud general would his troops.

Jesse’s hands were warm through Hanzo’s shirt, burning against the small of his back. He felt too aware of both his own breath and Jesse’s, the rise and fall of their chests where they were pressed together.

“Is she gone?” Jesse whispered close to his ear. Hanzo felt something like a shiver of electricity slither down his spine.

“As far as I can tell she has stormed off.”

Jesse gently pushed Hanzo away and stepped back; the space where his body had been immediately felt empty. He looked guilty. “Sorry 'bout that - it was the only thing I could think of and… are you okay or -”

“It was fine,” Hanzo said, so quickly that the words seemed to collide with each other on the way out. He cleared his throat and then added, with a bit more dignity: ”Much better than the time you hauled me along through the fish market, anyway. I still have fish guts all over that shirt.”

Jesse still seemed unsure – Hanzo patted his arm. ”Really. There is nothing to worry about.”

_In fact I would very much like to try that again._

It was clumsy, but it made Jesse’s shoulders relax back down, and that was the most important part. Jesse scratched the back of his neck and glanced away with a small, crooked smile.

”Okay, then. That’s all sorted.”

Now that the moment of awkwardness was over, Hanzo found himself staring in mingled wonder and disbelief.

“What’s that look about?” Jesse demanded, picking up his hat, brushing the dust off and putting it back on.

Hanzo kept staring. “She must have been eighty years old.”

“So?”

“So you ran like a spooked deer… from an eighty year old florist.”

“I don’t wanna fight a little old lady who arranges flowers for a living,” Jesse said indignantly.

“I suppose she did have a pair of gardening scissors in her hands,” Hanzo mused, mock-thoughtfully. ”And she looked like she was prepared to use them.”

“She was a walking talking exemplar for brittle bone disease! I wouldn’t dare poke her with my little finger!”

Hanzo couldn’t keep a straight face anymore, the laughter forced its way up his throat. “What could possibly… how did you end up in this situation?”

“Ah, good question. Let me present…” Jesse leaned down and picked up the bouquet from behind the dumpster, then held it out triumphantly.

“You… brought flowers for me?” Hanzo asked dubiously.

Jesse made a confused face at him. “Huh? Oh, wait, gotcha. Nah - I mean, you can have ‘em if you like, but… there we go.”

He fished out a data chip from between azaleas and gardenias.

“Ta-dah. Had a little mixup with my contact there for a minute, but I think we’ve got it sorted now. The info about the military hardware you were askin’ for.”

Hanzo held out his hand for it and slid it into an inner pocket, still watching Jesse’s face, unable to look away. “How do you even…”

“Dunno,” Jesse sighed. “These things just keep happening to me.”

Hanzo found himself wanting to reach out and ruffle his hair, like his father would do to him and Genji when they were boys. It was horrifying. ”Do you have any memory of angering an elderly woman with a hooked nose, maybe some warts? Apart from this one, that is.”

”As much as I’d like to think there were witches involved, I’m pretty sure it’s just natural talent and a lot of practice. I’m like... the Michelangelo of gettin’ into trouble. Something like that.”

”...sounds accurate.”

“D’you think she’ll be coming back this way?” Jesse said, glancing around the corner. “Because I still feel kinda bad about this.”

Hanzo had once seen Jesse shoot two people in the head in the span of a second before letting out a satisfied chuckle. It was nice to see that there were still lines to be drawn in those amorphous dunes of moral sand. “She might.”

“Right. I’ll just…” He darted over to a nearby bench and gingerly put the bouquet down without bruising the petals. “Let’s hope someone finds it and takes it back to her.”

”Let’s.”

Jesse huffed at Hanzo’s imitation and elbowed him gently in the side. ”Don’t sass me, I’m tryin’ to be a gentleman here.”

”By all means.”

They looked down at the flowers.  

”We should leave before anyone comes by and decides to prune us," Jesse said eventually. "I for one always appreciated the way all my limbs are still attached to my body.” 

”Sounds wise.”

“You know... I’ve got some time to burn, actually,” Jesse said, offhandedly, but he was watching Hanzo out of the corner of his eye - he didn’t know what kind of answer he would get to the question he hadn’t quite dared to ask.

Hanzo quirked a smile. “As do I. Perhaps we should should use the opportunity to see more of the place. Since we are both already here, I mean.”

Jesse lit up like he had caught his own personal beam of sunlight.  “Sure. We could do that. Get something to eat, maybe, these guys make even salad seem okay-ish if you put away enough ouzo first.”

The grin on Jesse’s face made something in Hanzo’s chest swell, but he also felt a kind of shame circling at the borders of his mind - he didn’t want to go home and he didn’t quite know why. ”I am glad to hear you volunteering to buy the drinks, then.”

”You drive a hard bargain, my friend,” Jesse sighed, resting his arm companionably on Hanzo’s shoulder as they walked down the street.

 

 

\-------

 

 

Jesse flicked pebbles into the water while he smoked, dangling his feet over the edge of the pier. His ridiculous cowboy boots made faint clinking sounds whenever the heels brushed against the side. Two months ago he had stumbled in through the door, bloodied and bruised and looking like the road had finally worn him down, and now he was smiling faintly and whistling under his breath.

Hanzo’s heart beat too loudly in his chest.

He should be on his way back, not wasting his own and his family’s time just sitting here. He should get a hold of himself and act like someone worthy of being his father’s heir. He should... there were a lot of shoulds in his life, as it turned out.

Jesse glanced over at him. ”You’re bein’ awfully quiet. Something wrong?”

”I...” _There is no future in it for either of you,_ Hanzo reminded himself. _You only meet every other month. This is about business. Your family did not send you here for this._

But another traitorous part of his brain whispered things like _’It would be simple to find ways to see him more often’_   and _’You could easily do business_ and _push him up against a wall and kiss him and take all his clothes off’_   and _’No one needs to know’_.

(Their father had always told them that secrets in the family were dangerous, but surely this wasn’t... This couldn’t be the kind of thing he’d meant. It didn’t feel dangerous; it just made him happy.)

”I do not have much to say,” Hanzo lied. ”This is... good.”

There was an unidentifiable but sweet smell in the air – Hanzo sniffed and tried to figure out what it was until he saw a few white petals still clinging to Jesse’s shoulder. He plucked them off and raised an eyebrow. ”Some kind of fashion statement?”

Jesse grinned and picked up another handful of neat, rounded pebbles, throwing them in one by one. ”Yeah. Thought I should doll myself up a bit for the occasion. You know how it is.”

The petals were light and soft like silk where they rested in his palm.

It would be easy. Well. Physically, anyway, Jesse was right there, it wasn’t as though it was complex geometry. If Hanzo turned his head their mouths would be close enough that all he needed to do was lean in a little and -  

...and he was pining like a pathetic teenager. Genji must _never_ find out about this.

The seagulls shrieked overhead and the ocean stretched out to the horizon in slow, lazy waves – the tide was coming back in.

”How’s your old man?” Jesse asked, looking down at the concentric circles the pebbles were leaving in the water.

”Better, I think.” That was not quite true, but it was what his father wanted him to see and he wanted to believe it.

”That’s good.”

”Mhm.”

Despite knowing him for two years Hanzo still had no idea who he could ask Jesse that kind of question about. Maybe there really was no one.

After a while Jesse bumped his foot against Hanzo’s. ”Thanks for playin’ along back there, by the way. That whole debacle could have turned out a lot worse. I could've had a pair of pruning shears embedded in my thigh as we speak.”

Hanzo snorted; he hoped the dismissal of the sound covered up the truth of what he said. ”Anytime. If you find yourself being chased down the street by elderly women again," he added, "you know who to call.”

”Careful now, I might just take you up on that. Rile up some grandmas just to get to see you.” It was a joke breezy enough that it didn’t demand an answer, which was good because Hanzo didn’t have one ready. He kicked Jesse lightly in the shin just to hear him snigger.

They kept up an idle conversation, mostly trading the kind of gossip you got in their line of work – ”Yeah, I wouldn’t bother with the Belgians, they always find some way to screw you over - you think they’re all waffles and pleasantries and then there’s a goddamn SWAT team on your heels” – until the sunset started to fade and Hanzo really had to go. He left Jesse on the pier, the smell of the ocean and cigarette smoke lingering on this clothes all the way home.

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t believe I googled ‘the language of flowers’ for this one when neither of them would know what the bloody things meant and Jesse didn’t actually pick them out in any meaningful way ha ha haaaah
> 
> (In case anyone’s interested: as far as I can tell azaleas mean something like ’Take care, temperance, fragile, gratitude, passion’, i.e. ’Stay safe and don’t get yourself killed, you dumbass’ and gardenias mean ’Secret love, joy, sweet love, good luck’, i.e. ’Because I’m in love with you and am just too chicken to act on it yet’.) 
> 
> Also the only two things I felt it was worth taking away from McCree’s comic were a) his hat somehow stayed on while he was just… chilling out on top of that high speed train (because that is apparently the kind of thing he does routinely) and b) at the end he’s sitting next to that little old lady he’s polite to during the raid. In my head he’s like Discworld’s Moist von Lipwig; elderly women see through their bullshit and know they’re good kids at heart. (Except this one because admittedly he did steal her stuff) Aaaw.


End file.
